Chesapake, USA - Amish farmers in Pennsylvania are coming under pressure from the federal government to stop allowing manure from their cows to reach the Chesapeake Bay or face environmental fines, according to a published report.
"There's much, much work that needs to be done, and I don't think the full community understands," David McGuigan of the Environmental Protection Agency told The New York Times.
The Chesapeake has been polluted for years by manure and synthetic fertilizer runoff and has had a dead zone since the 1970s, the Times said. Manure used on Amish farms in Lancaster County, Pa., washes into streams that flow into the bay, North America's largest estuary.
EPA data from 2007, the most recent available, indicates the county generates more than 61 million pounds of manure per year, 20 million pounds more than the next highest polluting county, according to the Times.
The challenge for McGuigan is to persuade the Amish and Old Order Mennonites, famously nervous about the government and outsiders, to change their farming practices with the help of federal grants. The so-called plain-sect farmers are key to helping keep the bay clean because, the Times points out, they own more than half of the 5,000-plus farms in Lancaster County.
"They are very resistant to government interference, and they object to government subsidies," said Donald Kraybill, who studies the Amish and is a professor at Elizabethtown College.
The waste problem has been around for more than 30 years. "We have too many animals here per square acre -- too many cows for too few acres," he told the Times. "They feel they should take care of their own."
The EPA has been trying to approach each farmer individually, with state and local conservation officials, to suggest changes like fences to keep animals away from streams, buffers to reduce runoff and manure pits to store it safely.
In September, McGuigan and other officials went to 23 plain-sect-owned farms and one other in an area of the county called Watson's Run. Of those, 17 were managing their manure inadequately, the Times said, with most of the manure also affecting water quality.
Farmers who met with the EPA declined to comment to the Times. But the brother-in-law of one of them, Matthew Stoltzfus, a 34-year-old Amish dairy farmer, said some farmers chose to make improvements in anticipation of EPA action.
"I had never heard of the EPA coming out to do inspections," said Stoltzfus, a father of seven. "I think these practices are going to be required more."
He applied for a government grant to help pay for about 70 percent of a new barn with a manure pit.
Some farmers felt insulted by the EPA's intervention.
"It's certainly generated controversy," farmer Sam Riehl said. "We wonder whether we are being told what to do, and whether the EPA will make it so that we can't even maintain our farms."
He said he would never take government money, though he said he does have a manure pit.
Stoltzfus hopes by building his manure pit, he can help the environment and avoid government interference. And, he noted, things had changed.
"Awhile back, Old Order Amish would not participate in programs like this," he said of the grant money, "but farming is getting expensive."